All posts tagged Hernández (Juan Orlando)

Government officials from different Latin American countries met in August 2017 to sign the “Lima Declaration,” establishing the Lima Group. / Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Perú / Flickr / Creative Commons

The “Lima Group” – an informal alliance of 12 Latin American countries created to observe the sensitive situation in Venezuela – has shown that its defense of democracy in the hemisphere is inconsistent. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru have on at least a handful of occasions condemned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for stoking political violence, holding political prisoners, committing electoral fraud, and engaging in other abuses, justifying their positions as based on ethics, morals, and good practices.

The reactions of the Lima Group and its leading members to the situation in Honduras since that country’s presidential election in November, however, suggests that the values they espouse do not have universal application. After OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro declared that the election lacked credibility and called for new elections, some countries’ pro-democracy fervor faded.

Argentine President Mauricio Macri’s administration quickly recognized Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández’s victory and officially declared its “disposition to continue working for the development of closer ties of friendship and more cooperation between the two nations.” The Brazilian foreign ministry expressed its “commitment to maintain and strengthen the ties of friendship and cooperation that traditionally have united both countries.” In Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government quickly recognized Hernández as well, calling on “Honduran society to support dialogue in order to preserve peace and democratic stability in that sister nation.”

The discrepancies between the group’s rhetoric and actions appear to be rooted in various reasons.

Political alignments take precedence over values. Honduran President Hernández has been active in the group’s (and indirectly the OAS’) efforts on Venezuela. Honduras is a member of the Lima Group, and Hernández is perceived by conservative governments as an ally to contain the spread of the left. The risk of massive Venezuelan population displacement, with profound potential consequences for neighboring countries, contrasts with the situation in Honduras. With the region entering a new election cycle, moreover, incumbents’ lack of support for Almagro’s position signals that they do not want the OAS messing around in their own electoral processes.

These governments also see Hernández as a strategic United States ally in Central America in combating drug trafficking, transnational criminal networks, money laundering, and irregular migration. Many of the governments may also refrain from criticizing the belief that Tegucigalpa benefits from the presence of 1 million Hondurans in the United States (more than half of whom the State Department says “are believed to be undocumented”). In addition, Honduras was one of the eight countries that supported President Donald Trump’s rejection of the UN General Assembly Resolution asking nations not to locate diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

The crises in Venezuela and Honduras are indeed different, and the international community’s interests in them are naturally different. Maduro’s and Hernández’s failings affect other countries’ political and economic equities in different ways. Maduro’s undemocratic actions increase unpredictability in the management of oil and other sectors of foreign interest, whereas Hernández’s represent predictability, if not stability, in areas that Washington cares about and Buenos Aires, Brasilia, and the rest of Latin America do not. But the high-sounding values at stake – democracy, institutionality, and rule of law – are the same in both countries. While Venezuela’s population is three times the size of Honduras’ and its political crisis arguably three times more advanced, the moral responsibility – and moral authority – of the Lima Group or its member nations is many times greater in a small, vulnerable, poor country like Honduras. Security forces have gunned down some three dozen oppositionists and protestors since the November election, and allegations of human rights violations have soared, but Latin America’s major democracies have been silent.

The failure to support the OAS’ call for new elections was not just a stab in the back of Secretary General Almagro; it revealed that their rhetoric about the OAS Democracy Charter – embodiment of democratic values they demand be respected in Venezuela – are not as universal as they say. When the Lima Group last Tuesday (with considerable justification) rejected the Venezuelan National Assembly’s call for an early presidential election, the Hernández government’s signature was there alongside the others. If universal democratic values and principles are not for universal application – if even an informal grouping will not criticize a small actor with whom they do not have major equities at stake – their value is much diminished.

January 30, 2018

* Nicolás Comini is Director of the Bachelor and Master Programs in International Relations at the Universidad del Salvador (Buenos Aires) and Professor at the New York University-Buenos Aires. He was Research Fellow at CLALS.

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro – consistent with his mandate and commitment to protect democracy throughout the hemisphere – has challenged the legitimacy of the Honduran presidential election, but member countries’ failure to embrace his call for new elections could undermine his leadership and the credibility of OAS democracy protection instruments. Almagro so far stands out as the only international actor exerting pressure on the Honduran government to guarantee free and fair elections after the serious irregularities observed on November 26.

On December 4, the OAS Electoral Observation Mission’s preliminary report established that the electoral process was characterized by irregularities and deficiencies, with low technical quality, and lacking integrity. Two days later, Almagro issued a statement concluding no winner could be determined and calling for the lifting of Honduran government measures that suspended the civil and political rights of Hondurans.

On December 17 – the same day the Honduran Electoral Tribunal proclaimed President Juan Orlando Hernández the winner in the election – the Observation Mission issued a second report documenting concerns about the electoral process The Secretary General then called for new elections, and appointed special representatives to set out the new electoral process and the process of national reconciliation in Honduras.

The Honduran government’s rejection of the OAS actions has hardened, apparently emboldened by the fact that no other international actor has backed Almagro’s call for new elections. In an official communique, Tegucigalpa rejected Almagro’s initiative to send a special representative; claimed the Secretary General had exceeded his authority; and accused him of jeopardizing the autonomy of the Electoral Mission and inciting the polarization of the Honduran population. In this way, Hernández, initially a strong supporter of OAS democracy protection efforts in Venezuela, now fends off the organization with arguments that recall those employed by Maduro’s government.

President Hernández seems to expect that he will overcome all challenges. He apparently believes the internal discontent, which has included peaceful demonstrations involving thousands of protesters, will cool down, and the opposition and angry citizens will come to terms with his reelection. He must be pleased, moreover, that Washington has endorsed his supposed victory, and that no other international actor has backed Almagro’s call for new elections. The European Union electoral mission dropped its initial complaints about the election. Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and others have congratulated Hernández on his reelection.

The burden now falls on the OAS Permanent Council and the OAS member states whether to support their Secretary General’s efforts to reestablish democratic order in Honduras. After the failed attempts to come up with a collective response in Venezuela, the electoral crisis in Honduras represents a new test for the credibility of American states’ commitment to multilateral democracy protection. If a majority of OAS member states do not support the call for new elections and accept the results of November 26, the signal would be that they trust neither the OAS electoral mission nor the Secretary General. This would be a new erosion in OAS legitimacy as an international organization and could even prompt the Secretary General to resign. As Latin America enters a “super electoral cycle” this year – with elections in Costa Rica, Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and possibly Venezuela – the management of the crisis in Honduras will have crucial, demonstrative effects on how tolerant the hemispheric community will be with breaches to the quintessential democratic institution: fair and free elections.

January 16, 2018

* Stefano Palestini Céspedes is a former CLALS Research Fellow and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he specializes in international organizations and regional governance.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and the military have declared a “state of emergency” – tantamount to martial law – to ensure that the President wins a second term, but irregularities in the vote-counting and the harsh suppression of the opposition probably will poison political discourse and hinder democratic progress for years to come. The government declared the emergency, which will run for 10 days, on Friday night after days of growing tensions over mysterious actions by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) – heavily stacked in favor of Hernández – that erased opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla’s five-point lead earlier in the week and moved toward formalizing the incumbent’s victory by 1.5 percentage points. Senior government officials themselves have characterized the action as a “suspension of constitutional guarantees.” Hondurans are now living under a dusk-to-dawn curfew; radio and TV stations have been warned against publicizing opposition claims of fraud; and street confrontations are growing. Media confirm several deaths, but opposition leaders say that more than a dozen demonstrators have been killed. Opposition videos showing military and police violence, including chasing individual protestors and shooting them, have been removed from Facebook and other venues, although still photos of the victims can be found.

The TSE has agreed to hand-count about a thousand ballot boxes with “irregularities” in three of 18 departments, representing about 6 percent of the votes, but the opposition claims that several thousand more boxes have been compromised and need to be reviewed.

International reaction has been mixed and generally muted. The EU’s observers have held firm on demanding a full vote count and expressing, diplomatically, skepticism about TSE’s handling of it. Observers for the “Grupo de Lima,” which has been active on the Venezuela issue, issued a “position” paper on election day (November 26) urging calm and patience with the vote count, but it has released no apparent updates since then. OAS observers have taken a similar low-key position.

Although the Trump Administration may conceivably be working behind the scenes, neither the White House nor State Department has done publicly more than urge calm. Vice President Pence, who previously praised Hernández “for his leadership in addressing security and governance challenges,” has remained silent. The U.S. chargé d’affaires has said Honduras is in “a new, unprecedented phase in the electoral process” but limited herself to calling for calm and a full vote count.

The audacity of this apparent election fraud and crackdown on Hernández’s opponents dwarfs the many other charges of corruption brought against the Hernández government, including some validated by the OAS Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH). Although different in form from the coup in 2009, these events also threaten to undermine the nation’s political stability, economic wellbeing, and institutions necessary to building democracy. The U.S. reaction suggests that Washington will acquiesce in the ongoing abuses and Hernández’s second term despite the obvious irregularities and rights violations. The United States – convinced as in the past that political leaders who are “our SOBs” can make good partners – has often countenanced dubious elections. Moreover, both the Obama and Trump Administrations were persuaded that Hernández has been their faithful, effective ally in combating the drug trade, despite evidence of official involvement in it, and the temptation to turn a blind eye to less-than-democratic political outcomes must be strong.

The OAS, the “Lima Group,” and other intraregional groupings do not appear poised to weigh in despite their good intentions. Neither do Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador appear likely to condemn a neighbor for engaging in practices that are ongoing or fresh in their own near pasts. The Inter-American Democratic Charter, a historic document laying out hemispheric values, is of little value in the absence of the political will and ability to enforce it. Now is a crunch time both for the OAS and for those governments that advocate some teeth to the charter. At this point, they appear likely to cave – to the detriment of democracy in Latin America.

The OAS “Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras” (MACCIH) approaches its first anniversary in April with some gains and many challenges. Launched after months of negotiations with the government of President Juan Orlando Hernández, MACCIH was created partly in response to widespread street protests by the Indignados (the “Outraged”), angered that the president’s campaign had benefitted from $300 million embezzled by officials of the Social Security Institute (IHSS). Hernández was widely believed to accept the mission only because his tenure in office – and a possible second term – were in danger.

MACCIH was inspired by Guatemala’s CICIG, the UN-backed commission supporting that country’s judicial institutions, but Hernández insisted on major differences. He consented only to a mission of the OAS, generally seen as weaker than the United Nations. MACCIH is weaker than CICIG in that it cannot initiate its own case investigations and must channel all its investigative and prosecutorial work through Honduran authorities. (CICIG enjoys full investigative police powers and can initiate its own wiretaps and surveillance.) MACCIH is headed in-country by a “spokesman” for the OAS Secretary-General, who nominally leads the mission from Washington, and its $2 million first-year budget has been only about one-sixth that of CICIG’s annual budget.

As a result, MACCIH opened to skepticism that its slow start hasn’t dispelled. Its investigations have produced virtually no corruption-related arrests or prosecutions. Setting up the office took much of 2016. The head of criminal investigations only arrived in the summer, and the public security office only opened this month. In contrast, a Honduran Police Reform Commission has sacked over 3,000 police officers. Civil society organizations complain of MACCIH’s lack of impact, and a novel “observatory” comprising academic institutions and civil society groups remains ill-defined. MACCIH’s decision not take up the investigation of the high-profile murder of environmental rights activist Berta Cáceres has seemed to sideline the mission from a case that emblemizes impunity, even if it seems not to involve far-reaching corruption.

However, MACCIH has scored some wins. It has embarked on a handful of complex corruption cases, including the IHSS case that sparked its creation. The mission helped Honduran prosecutors prepare charges of arms possession against Mario Zelaya, the highest-profile suspect in the IHSS case, which kept him in jail long enough for more serious charges to be brought. It helped secure two laws – to regulate campaign financing and to create a nationwide anti-corruption jurisdiction with its own selected judges and prosecutors. MACCIH’s in-country leader, former Peruvian Prime Minister Juan Jiménez Mayor, has been forward-leaning in acting on his mandate.

MACCIH gained support in an early test late last year. In November, its concerns about several Hernández nominees to the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas, an audit court with special powers over corruption investigations, earned the ire of Honduran senior officials who complained to Secretary General Almagro. The appointments were not altered, laying bare the mission’s limitations. But Almagro stood by his organization’s analysis and role, with Jiménez Mayor emerging stronger as his special representative, not just his spokesman.

That same month, the board chair of Transparency International, José Ugaz, visited Honduras and urged civil society organizations to help ensure MACCIH’s success. Since then, they have showed a more positive attitude toward MACCIH, and more witnesses are now cooperating with the mission.

Comparisons between MACCIH with CICIG may arguably be unfair just one year out. Observers recall that CICIG had difficulty showing impact in its initial investigations and was criticized as ineffectual. Delivering on its ambitious mission to help curb corruption and impunity – in a country notorious for both – will be even harder. However, the mission has accomplished as much as CICIG did in its first year in case investigations and legal reform. Despite its limitations and slow start, MACCIH’s performance does not preclude obtaining far-reaching corruption convictions and strengthening the Honduran judicial system in coming years. As civil society groups seem to be getting past their disappointment that their country did not get a CICIG, their collaboration will be crucial to the mission’s success.

March 13, 2017

* Chuck Call teaches International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet with the leaders of her coalition, Nueva Mayoría. The Chilean presidential election of 2017 will determine the legacy of the Nueva Mayoría. / Gobierno de Chile / Flickr / Creative Commons

The new year will be an intense one for Latin American elections. Although perhaps not as important as those taking place in 2018, this year’s elections will have a significant impact on the countries holding them and, in some cases, the region as a whole.

In Ecuador’s presidential and legislative elections on February 19, the PAIS Alliance will run a slate of nominees for the first time without Rafael Correa heading its slate. The President said he’s stepping down for family reasons, but Ecuador’s economic problems, aggravated by the decline in oil prices, apparently convinced him to seal his legacy on a high note now rather than end his time in office in defeat. The party’s presidential candidate, former Vice President Lenin Moreno, has a 10-point lead in polls over his closest competitor and has the advantage of facing an opposition divided among seven candidates, but his leadership remains uncertain.

In Mexico, the state governors of México, Nayarit, and Coahuila and mayor of Veracruz are up for election on June 4. The race in México state will measure the popular backing of the four parties in contention – PRI, PAN, PRD, and López Obrador’s new Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) – in the 2018 presidential election. The older parties will begin to weed out the weaker pre-candidates.

Elections for half of the Argentine Congress and a third of its Senate in October will define the second half of President Mauricio Macri’s presidency. The government is confident that economic recovery will strengthen its election prospects. A weak showing will strengthen the Peronista opposition and complicate Macri’s agenda. The Peronistas are currently divided into three big factions – that of Sergio Massa; the “orthodox” wing headed by some provincial governors, and corruption-plagued Kircherismo grouping headed by former President Cristina Fernández. Open, simultaneous, and obligatory primaries (known by the Spanish acronym PASO) in August will be an important test for all.

Chile will elect a successor to President Michelle Bachelet on November 19. Primaries in July will reveal whether the country’s two big coalitions – the center-left (including the President’s Nueva Mayoría) and the center-right – are holding, as well as the presidential candidates’ identity. The names of former Presidents Sebastián Piñera and Ricardo Lagos are in the air, but it’s too early to know how things will play out in the environment of growing popular disaffection with politics and politicians.

Honduras will hold elections on November 26. Due to a Supreme Court decision permitting reelection, incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández could face a challenge from ex-President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, who was removed from office by the Army in June 2009, running as head of the Libertad y Refundación (Libre) Party.

Also in November, Bolivia will elect members of various high courts, including the Constitutional, Supreme, and Agro-Environmental Tribunals and the Magistracy Council. These elections will reveal the support President Evo Morales will have as he tries to reform the Constitution to allow himself to run for yet another term in office.

These elections in 2017 have a heavy national component but will shed light on the region’s future direction. The success or failure of the populist projects in Ecuador and Honduras, or of President Bachelet’s Nueva Mayoría in Chile, will tell us where we are and, above all, help us discern where we’re headed.

January 17, 2017

*Carlos Malamud is Senior Analyst for Latin America at the Elcano Royal Institute, and Professor of Latin American History at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid. This article was originally published in Infolatam.

U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential nominee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, may help her politically in the November election, and his potential influence on U.S. policy toward Latin America could be extremely important over the long haul. Though Kaine’s Latin American experience likely was a secondary consideration in his selection, it is consistent with the role of the office of the vice president that has emerged during the Obama Administration as a center for serious policy initiatives in the Americas.

Kaine spent nine months in El Progreso, Honduras, as a young man working at a high school founded by Jesuit missionaries; he learned Spanish there and frequently mentions the period as formative. His approach to the region and immigration seems anchored in a focus on human dignity and belies an understanding of the difficult circumstances many there face. El Progreso is close to San Pedro Sula, which has been a center of the country’s staggering violence and emigration. In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Kaine wrote that when unaccompanied minors arrived to the U.S. border in unprecedented numbers, “I felt as if I knew them.”

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kaine has developed a rare policy focus on Honduras. He has pressed the U.S. and Honduran governments on issues of human rights in the wake of the 2009 coup. In 2013, Kaine urged Secretary of State John Kerry for stronger U.S. support for elections. Just two weeks ago, he called on Honduran President Hernández for greater effort on justice in the killing of environmental activist Berta Cáceres.

Kaine has placed immigration policy at the confluence of foreign and domestic policy. He has pressed President Obama to halt “deportation raids targeting families and unaccompanied minors who have fled the rampant violence in Central America’s Northern Triangle.”

Kaine’s political rhetoric often reflects his Jesuit background, and his Catholicism-inspired references to social justice – and his warm welcome for Pope Francis – are likely to earn him an empathetic ear among many throughout Latin America.

Vice-presidential leadership for the Americas offers an important opportunity – and one that Tim Kaine, if elected, is likely to use wisely. He has complained that Washington usually pays attention to Latin America only in moments of crisis, and has argued the region should get similar priority as China, Russia, or the Middle East. He would build on efforts initiated by Vice President Joe Biden, who has chaired a “High Level Economic Dialogue” with Mexico and pushed for the $750 million “Alliance for Prosperity” in Central America. Kaine would be an asset in relationships that often fuse international and domestic policy, slicing across the domains of myriad departments and agencies. While Kaine’s personal interest and positive relationships don’t guarantee policy successes on migration, drug policy, citizen security, and development assistance as vice president, his language skills and reputation for treating colleagues with respect all but guarantee a warm reception from leaders of countries long aggrieved by U.S. highhandedness.

August 2, 2016

*Tom Long is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Reading (UK) and an Affiliated Professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City. He is the author of Latin America Confronts the United States: Asymmetry and Influence, published last year by Cambridge University Press.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who last month passed the half-way point in his four-year term, has scored some important political gains, with uncertain implications for his country.

The Obama Administration has embraced him as a partner in the “Alliance for Prosperity,” to which it has committed $750 million year to “build a safer and more prosperous future for [Northern Triangle] citizens.” It represents a doubling of U.S. assistance.

In a decision Hernández said he “would respect,” last April the Honduran Constitutional Court – key members of which the Congress elected under circumstances of questionable legality when he was Congress President – allowed him and other former presidents to run for reelection. The Chairman of the Congressional budget committee last week said there “should be no doubt” that the party is committed to Hernández serving a second term.

He successfully parried efforts to create a copy in Honduras of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), the UN-sponsored body with extensive powers in that country. The final terms of reference of the OAS-sponsored “Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras” (MACCIH) aren’t as loose as he had proposed, but many of its key definitions, personnel, and funding remain highly uncertain. OAS Secretary General Almagro’s public blessing of it was a public relations coup.

The Honduran Congress’s approval last week of a new 15-member Supreme Court took numerous rounds of voting – presidents traditionally get the slate approved in one vote – but his party did well enough. Allegations of bribery arose immediately. Praising the new court, he said last Friday that he would soon launch a national dialogue on additional Constitutional reforms and on “revising the social contract of Honduras” and building “a new Honduras.”

Hernández is not without critics in Tegucigalpa and Washington – even if their attacks have not thwarted him. Opponents claim that his desire to overturn Constitutional prohibitions on a second term was more blatant than that of former President Mel Zelaya, whose removal by the military in 2009 Hernández supported claiming that Zelaya violated the prohibition. Hernández has admitted that his party received funds embezzled from the national Social Security agency. The Indignados, a grassroots opposition, doesn’t have the lobbying resources that the government has, but they have mobilized massive peaceful demonstrations, and veteran Honduras watchers praise their idealism, discipline, and maturity beyond their youthfulness.

Hondurans and foreign governments often favor leaders whose appearance of power promises stability, rather than favor processes and values – such as transparency and inclusiveness – that promise more effective democratic institutions. Hernández was elected with barely 35 percent of the vote, but his growing power, coinciding with the weakening of legislative and judicial institutions, has concentrated power on the executive. The country arguably faces one of the most complex situations in its history, on the cusp of either difficult change, such as reducing shocking levels of impunity, or a deepening of the current crisis. The economic and political elites who control the nation have driven it into a rut from which “more of the same” does not appear a viable way out. Hernández won praise from the international financial community by pushing through fiscal adjustments, yet these measures increased inequality in a country where half the population lives on less than $4 a day. Preliminary data show that austerity has brought about an increase in unemployment and underemployment, which already affected roughly half of the labor force. A U.S. and Mexican crackdown on Central American migration has reduced one of the only options that young Hondurans fleeing poverty, violence, and impunity thought they had. While many Hondurans may wind up accepting a President’s reelection to a non-consecutive term, Hernández’s big push for a consecutive one and his talk of a “new social contract” understandably fuels skepticism if not angst.

Latin American governments, political parties, and business associations have a long history of turning to U.S.-based lobbying, legal, and public relations firms to advance their interests in the United States – with mixed results. Both national and multinational groups have been utilizing lobbyists since at least the 1940s, when the U.S. government began registering foreign agents. Their most consistent goal over the decades has been to influence U.S. policy on foreign trade and investment, but they have also aimed to improve governments’ sagging reputation and protect them from adverse policies. In the 1970s, a number of military regimes and right-wing political groups in Central and South America hired lobbyists to devise and implement strategies to counter criticism of their human rights record – to preserve trade and military assistance.

Some 30 Latin American countries and interests groups in 2010-14 registered foreign agents to influence U.S. policies. The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism spent the most, paying $128.9 million to promote tourism – as well as to monitor and speak with Congressional representatives about U.S. legislation related to transnational financial activities in which they are involved, such as the regulation of offshore tax havens and online casinos.

In 2013, Mexico ranked fifth worldwide, at $6.1 million. Both federal and local governments pay firms to burnish the image of their respective constituencies. From 2010-12, for example, Mexico City worked with a firm to “enhance the image of Mexico City in light of recent negative media reports.” In 2014, the Consejo de Promoción Turístico de México hired another company to “make Mexico an attractive destination.”

Ecuador, which at $1.1 million ranked twenty-second in 2013, spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying in support of the ultimately failed Yasuni rain forest oil drilling initiative.

More recently, the government of Honduras – burdened with the image as one of the most violent, corrupt, and crime-ridden countries in the world – hired lobbyists to “provide ongoing strategic counsel, media relations (proactive and reactive outreach), and third-party relations.” The firm, winning an initial one-year contract for $420,000, had just completed a nine-year relationship representing Russia.

A review of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records indicates that foreign lobbyists represent almost exclusively governments, state agencies, and the private business sector, and that more popular civil-society actors – such as labor unions and indigenous organizations – are notably absent. Even though foreign governments obviously judge the investment worthwhile, the impact of foreign-funded lobbyists is difficult to measure. The Honduran government’s new push to burnish its image has paid off on Capitol Hill, according to observers, but a new initiative to reduce Honduran corruption doesn’t appear to have gone exactly as Tegucigalpa hoped. Forced to respond to a protest wave calling for the creation of an independent investigative body similar to the Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG), the Honduran government agreed with the OAS to create the Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras (MACCIH) as a collaborative effort. MACCIH indeed lacks the independence – and the potential bite – that CICIG had, but it is significantly tougher than the Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández initially proposed. In this case at least, lobbyists have helped the government gain access and public relations points in Washington but didn’t get it off the hook entirely.

January 22, 2016

* Aaron Bell is an adjunct professor in History and American Studies at American University.

CLALS and the Inter-American Dialogue this week hosted a conversation on the crisis in Honduras with experts Hugo Noé Pino, of the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales, and Carlos Ponce, of Freedom House, and about a dozen of some 80 participants spoke up. The following are key analytical points that were broadly accepted during the 90-minute session.

Honduras is experiencing a multi-faceted crisis – economic, political, judicial, and security– that has grown steadily worse since the 2009 coup and shows no sign of abating.

Economic growth (1.5 percent per capita) is too low to alleviate the country’s severe employment problem (affecting half of the working-age population) and poverty (62 percent). Recent polls indicate that some 63 percent of all Hondurans would leave the country if they could.

Violence, corruption scandals, and the steady weakening of institutions dim prospects for a turnaround.

The over-concentration of power in the Executive, the remilitarization of law-enforcement and other security services, and the politicization of the judiciary have undermined what democratic foundation Honduras had built since the last military government stepped down in 1980. The economic and political elites, as well as the media they control, have further stifled political discourse.

The Sala Constitucional of the Supreme Court and the National Electoral Tribunal have been stacked to tightly control preparations for elections scheduled for November 2017, apparently with the intention of ensuring the reelection of President Juan Orlando Hernández.

The Honduran political class lacks the will to root out corruption, and is united in resisting developing the capacity and programs to do so.

The embezzlement of more than $300 million from the Social Security Institute – funneling part of these funds to the ruling National Party and a variety of fronts – led to the flight of the investigating fiscal (who left the country because of death threats to himself and his family) but little else. Indeed, the most significant law-enforcement actions, such as the indictment of members of the Rosenthal family on money-laundering charges, have come from the United States. Some 80 percent of crimes in Honduras go uninvestigated and unpunished; some reports put the figure as high as 96-98 percent.

A Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Honduras (CICIH), adapted from the successful CICIG model in Guatemala, would be a healthy way of addressing ongoing impunity while building investigative and prosecutorial institutions. The economic and political elites solidly oppose it. Even if Honduras accepted a CICIH, alone it probably would not be a silver bullet.

The OAS’s planned “Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras” (MACCIH) – announced in late September jointly with Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez – shows little promise of success. Its mandate will be to diagnose problems and write reports, not take action or facilitate a serious, inclusive national dialogue.

Opposition to the current Honduran government is strong and growing, but it has not yet institutionalized.

Peaceful marches organized by the Indignados and other organizations have mobilized tens of thousands of citizens outraged by government corruption and its inability to provide even basic citizen security. Among the masses have been an unprecedented number of middle-class and upper-middle-class persons – not seen during previous crises.

Opposition groups are still struggling, however, to coalesce into a viable, institutionalized political force. Sustaining effective leadership and overcoming pressure from the government and Honduras’s two traditional parties are difficult challenges for them.

There are no magic or quick solutions to the crisis.

Any solution would have many moving parts, including recognition by elites that their own assets are threatened by the deepening chaos. The government will have to be held accountable for corruption. The judiciary will have to be strengthened and made independent. The military will have to return to the barracks. The media will have to be professionalized. Civil society will have to be empowered.

The U.S.-sponsored “Alliance for Prosperity” is unlikely to help Honduras – and could make things worse if it doesn’t challenge the status quo. Honduran observers believe that the $250-plus million dollars from the program should focus on deep change – the product of a broad national dialogue – and should be conditioned on deep reforms, rather than working with just the sitting government, which has shown no willingness to reform.

U.S. cooperation in counternarcotics and other security operations might in some cases expose partnered services to U.S. respect for human rights and democratic institutions, but the resources transferred in the process also serve to strengthen them and make them more independent of civilian authority.

October 15, 2015

* Correction: The first sentence of the article originally stated “CLALS and the Inter-American Dialogue this week hosted a conversation on the crisis in Honduras with experts Hugo Noé Pino, of the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales, and Carlos Ponce, of Freedom House, and a dozen speakers from among over 80 participants.” It was edited to clarify that “about a dozen of some 80 participants spoke up.”

The success of the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG) in driving anti-corruption efforts there – culminating in the resignation of President Pérez Molina – has stoked debate in neighboring Honduras on the wisdom of creating a “CICIH” with the same mission to root out the rot that permeates state institutions and perpetuates the misery of the citizenry. President Juan Orlando Hernandez has stated categorically that no such entity is needed in Honduras given advances in the country’s own institutions and his own putative commitment to good governance. Some civil society organizations are at least implicitly concurring by taking part in accountability initiatives involving collaboration with the government. Other voices from civil society are objecting vociferously, however. Most notable among them are the indignados, a largely youth-based movement that insists that the President himself and virtually the entire institutional system in Honduras is so rotten that only an international body can be trusted to root out endemic corruption. The argument rages on, with the indignados staging regular demonstrations and the government – occupied simultaneously with promoting its credibility at home and abroad and maneuvering to secure authorization for presidential re-election – holding fast to its opposition to any such international role. The debate will continue for the foreseeable future. We sketch below our understanding of the competing arguments.

Arguments in favor of a CICIH:

By nearly all accounts, corruption has rendered the public and private sectors chronically ineffective – from the President (who admitted that millions from Social Security made it into his campaign coffers and who engaged in nepotism), through the government ministries and even the judicial bureaucracies (where political pressure, intimidation, and bribery are rampant), and companies large and small (for whom payoffs are merely an added budget item). The country has topped the charts in non-war homicides, including targeted killings, and other violence for several years, further discouraging investigations and prosecutions. The flood of narcotics and cash through Honduras has thrown fuel onto the flames. Only an independent, UN-endorsed entity like a CICIH – with its unique ability to train, protect, and motivate judicial personnel, issue indictments, and put powerful people in jail, and shame local government into taking action – can help the country climb out of this deep hole, this argument goes.

Arguments against:

Steven Dudley of InSight Crime notes that the call for a CICIH comes at a time that the Attorney General’s office is showing some signs of life. Its anti-corruption efforts have led to the indictment and arrest of the former head of the Social Security Institute on charges of embezzlement and illegally financing political parties (although some charges were dropped). Combating crime, cheaper homemade solutions are showing results in Honduras in terms of training and cases resolved. Organizations like the Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ) are doing groundbreaking work to keep homicide levels down in some of the worst neighborhoods at a fraction of the cost of a CICIH. Expense is another important factor. In Guatemala the CICIG costs between $12 million and $15 million annually, which even that country, far wealthier than Honduras, cannot afford. CICIG has provided valuable assistance and training to Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office, but its foreign investigators, who move around in armored vehicles with armed bodyguards, leech massive resources that might otherwise go to fortify local prosecutors’ offices. Moreover, according to this argument, the investigators don’t need foreign prosecutors to tell them what they’re doing wrong.

Skeptics further contend that international donors and pro-reform Hondurans arguably will not get the quick fix and public relations victory they want from a CICIH. It took over a decade for CICIG to set up in Guatemala and nearly eight years to get the right mix of cases. Its greatest strategic goal – fortifying Guatemala’s justice system – remains a work in progress. The Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office has not yet executed a complicated, forensic investigation leading to a high-level prosecution. Honduras’s greater reliance on foreign assistance, according to this argument, suggests a CICIH would actually enable its dependency, rather than break it.

The weakness and rot within Honduran institutions and the venality of national leadership strongly suggest that neither approach – a foreign-backed entity like CICIH or a home-grown solution – could quickly reverse the tsunami of corruption and violence that the isthmus’s poorest country has been experiencing since the 2009 coup. Ideally, the best of Honduras’s own efforts could be buttressed by a Honduran version of the CICIG model, but the knack of the country’s leaders for overwhelming even the best of intentions, as they did the “Truth Commission” charged with determining accountability for the coup and rights abuses carried out in its aftermath, argues for extreme caution in forming expectations. The debate therefore may boil down to the moral argument of whether the international community, witnessing Honduras’s descent into utter lawlessness and destitution, can stand idly by or should at least offer its help in what form it can, such as a CICIH. Even if a CICIH is not a panacea, it at least would send a powerful message to Honduran elites that the world is watching.